Improving Retrieval Effectiveness by Reranking Documents Based on Controlled Vocabulary

Abstract. There is a common availability of classification terms in online text collections and digital libraries, such as manually assigned keywords or key-phrases from a controlled vocabulary in scientific collections. Our goal is to explore the use of additional classification information for improving retrieval effectiveness. Earlier research explored the effect of adding classification terms to user queries, leading to little or no improvement. We explore a new feedback technique that reranks the set of initially retrieved documents based on the controlled vocabulary terms assigned to the documents. Since we do not want to rely on the availability of special dictionaries or thesauri, we compute the meaning of controlled vocabulary terms based on their occurrence in the collection. Our reranking strategy significantly improves retrieval effectiveness in domain-specific collections. Experimental evaluation is done on the German GIRT and French Amaryllis collections, using the test-s...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ECIR
• Authors: Jaap Kamps
• Keywords: Classification Terms, Controlled Vocabulary, Controlled Vocabulary Terms, ECIR 2004, Information Technology